Doctor Who: Listen / Midnight / Night Terrors

Midnight 4.11

What makes Midnight one of the scariest Doctor Who episodes is that you never see the monsters. Leaving Donna to spa herself up on a resort planet, the Doctor (#10, Tennant) goes on a guided tour of the planet Midnight, one of the most inhabitable planets in the universe, though beautiful to look at because it’s all diamonds. However, when the sun-blocking shields malfunction, the windows shut, and the drivers of their buggie are killed, the group of tourists are stranded off course. At first, they only have their own malicious personalities to deal with. Then the creaking noises outside begin and their paranoia gets the best of them. Is there something out there? There seems to be some debate, even when whatever it is comes knocking. Knock knock knock. Once the monster captures the voice of Sky, one of the tourists, the Doctor is convinced that something is out there, but the others don’t like him, so when it captures his own voice, the group is happy to attempt to throw him off the buggie into the poisonous, sunsoaked landscape. This is the one time the Doctor’s catchphrase, Allons-y, will come in handy and even save his life.

Night Terrors 6.10

Daniel Mays stars as Alex in this childlike thriller, when he calls for a doctor to inspect his adopted son, George, who is suffering from vicious night terrors. But curiously, it isn’t Alex’s call for help that the Doctor (#11, Smith) receives, but’s George’s…on his psychic paper. The Doctor poses as a child psychologist and makes a house call to discover that the supposedly imaginary monster in George’s closet is real (and that George isn’t an ordinary boy himself). The Doctor, his companions Amy and Rory, Alex, and George are sucked into a doll house where the creepy man-sized dolls can turn you like them. Luckily, some fatherly love saves the day.

Listen 8.4

Samuel Anderson stars in this childlike thriller where we learn that the Doctor (#12, Capaldi) is afraid of the dark. Spooked by the idea that there might be something watching him, something that lives under the bed, the Doctor attempts to investigate Clara’s childhood nightmares about monsters lurking under her bed, but inevitably, the TARDIS takes them to the wrong place, and they wind up investigating what’s under the bed of little Danny Pink, who in the present, Clara is consecutively failing at dates with. Another failed calculation takes them to the end of the universe where novice time traveler Orson Pink has stranded himself on the last planet left in existence. We are led to believe he is a future relative of Clara and Danny. The last planet is uninhabitable, but Orson suggests that there is something out there. He can hear it creaking, and then the monster comes knocking. Knock knock knock. The Doctor is unwilling to leave until he’s seen the creature, after having left Midnight without a clue, but he is knocked unconscious and never gets a chance. After yet another accidental trip in the TARDIS, Clara has an encounter with the Doctor as a child, and she convinces herself that there is no monster at all and that they are all just a little too afraid of the dark.